Firstly i know about usb loader BUT money is very tight at the moment and i bought my children a second hand wii for christmas but the sad truth is i can not afford any storage for usb loader to work. I am told it has a wiikey (one?) fitted but the seller said it stopped working after he updated the wii accidentally. Whilst i would love to use usb loader i have no cash for even a cheap thumb drive.

I am told priiloader is installed which he thought would fix it but it did not and backup games will not work and he also tried start patch 4.3.1E but it gave an error? and that he upgraded the wiikey to 1.9 but that also didn't work.

he suggests if i downgrade it to 3.2 it will work again but after many google's i can not find a guide or how to downgrade from 4.3.1E to 3.2E or even if that would work?

Would anyone be kind enough to point me in the right direction please? I would be very grateful as would my children as he has given me around 100 disks as well as 5 genuine games.

If it is upgraded to 4.3 it likely has boot2 updated as well. In this case downgrade will brick your Wii. And it is NOT recommended to downgrade boot2 (I'm not sure if old boot2 is even on Nintendo server anymore).

To me it sounds like you bought a Wii that is hacked in a bad state. Really save some money to buy a thumb drive.

If you don't want to save money you can go DARKCORP route (again not recommended, even more risky)

I would skip the wiikey altogether, and just hack it with ModMii, its a PC app, and you need a 2GB SD card.
It will DL all files needed to re-hack your wii with......
Click on it in my sig, and read up.....

WOW, than you kindly for such a prompt response. Looks like i will be selling one of the kids then.
is it possible to get priiloader or start patch to enable the wiikey?

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PriiLoader could not help with the WiiKey but if does have other benefits. If at least those 5 genuine games you have right now still work fine it means at least the drive still works even though the WiiKey that's connected to it doesn't and (after going through ModMii as mentioned above ... which will also give you the option to downgrade to 4.1 which might also help by itself) you COULD install DarkCorp. The risk that was mentioned a couple of posts up is actually just if the power goes out while it's installing and even then, only if it goes out at the wrong time while it's installing. (It's a similar risk to when a normal, unmodified Wii goes through a normal system menu update.) Even then, it's likely your wii is old enough that ModMii will be able to tell you to install "BootMii as Boot2" and then make a backup which will make it possible to completely recover even on the off chance that something DOES go wrong with that.

ok i tried following the ModMii (aw) route but it was WAY over my little head lol

so i download this darkcorp and provided i don't have a power cut i can run backup games again?

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It should do the trick, yes.
Just in case, I would recommend running the hackmii installer first and using bootmii to make a backup first, just in case something goes wrong.
1. download the hackmii installer here http://bootmii.org/download/
2. put the "boot.elf" file in a folder on your SD card called /apps/hackmii and run it with the Homebrew Channel.
3. install everything it has to offer. If you already have it, it will just update it. (this is BootMii as an IOS, BootMii as Boot2 and the Homebrew Channel (HBC) and have it make the files SD card that BootMii need to run)
4. When it's done, to go the Homebrew Channel (it might take you there by itself) and press the home button and select the option to start BootMii.
5. The Wii-Remote doesn't work in BootMii so you'll have to use the power and reset buttons to move through the menus (If I remember right, the power button selects stuff and the reset button moved to the next option.)
6. Have it make a backup of the Wii (the one with the arrow pointing to the SD card.)
7. Now you can go back to the SD card and run the DarkCorp installer and it should then be able to play backup DVD-R games when it's done.

As for ModMii, it would have told you to do what I just said anyhow, but I'm kinda curious which part you found difficult. You would basically be telling it that you're starting from scratch and it would tell you how to do the rest. It even had instructional videos it can bring up if you don't understand some part. . . anyway, it was just out of curiosity, no biggie.

sorry when i first tried it kept saying there was nothing to download? so i tried the second option that talked of nads? or something.

anyway something is now downloading and i have an instruction screen on what to do also which i will work through slowly.

when i downgrade to 4.1 i do not need a disk to re add the homebrew channel do i?

i will make this back up firstly before trying anything though.

Thank you again for you kindly taking time to help.

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RE-adding the homebrew channel shouldn't be necessary after you're done with what ModMii tells you to do (ModMii might tell you to do it but it's just to update it. The same installer that installs / updates the homebrew channel also installs bootmii (backup utility) so, yeah, it probably will ask you to do that but it's not because downgrading will actually remove it. It's just to be sure you have the newest version. It will not need to be done any ADITIONAL times, though.

As I've seen it most USB hard drives are compatible with USB loaders .. but there's always one model or another that doesn't work and I don't really know how to tell off hand. I'd say for the most part you're safe, though.

as far as the backup, and downgrade, sounds like you're still going through the ModMii process as far as I can tell. Just keep following all the steps and feel free to ask any more questions you have.

i'm not confused as to whether i run from bootmii or home brew channel and do i run each program? or just install all the wads?

if i run from mod manager do i use ios249? and what is nand emulator device setting? (disable, sd card or usb 2.0)

thank you

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Okay, what you need to do is rename the folder called "bootmii" on your SD card to, well, something else ("bootmii2" for example) What makes bootmii so safe is that no matter what you screw up on your Wii (unless it involves breaking bootmii itself) it will always come up first and you'll always be able to get at it to help you fix things.

the other nice thing, though, is that if it doesn't see the "bootmii" folder on the SD card it will skip right through to the system menu like normal.

as far as what to do, ModMii should have generated a guide (or at least given the option to do so) that you would be following step by step as to what to do with everything that it downloaded for you.
If you've already gone past that point or closed ModMii and the option's no longer available, I think there's an option in ModMii to just show make the guide and not download the files so you can go through giving it the same answers and choose THAT option ... and then just follow the steps.

The first few steps might be the same as what you've just done to make the backup and everything so you can just skip them if you want ... but it wouldn't do any DAMAGE to repeat. it'd just be a time issue.

USBLoader GX has a + icon on main menu to install the game in your Wii drive to the connected USB drive. (Both WiiFlow and CFG USB Loader can also install your games to your USB drive.) If the USB drive is FAT32 or NTFS and there isn't already a wbfs folder, GX will create it and save the games as .wbfs files.
And Wii Backup Manager, not WBFS Manager, is what you'd want for a FAT32 or NTFS formatted Wii drive.

GX, like other USB loaders and NeoGamma, can also load a game from the disc drive...

Does the wii read retail games?
Try loading a backup disc via neogama, also the wii is very picky aboaut which media it will and will not load. Burning with imgburn nice and slow on verbatim dvd r- is usually best.